Dr Eirini Avramopoulou

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British School at Athens52 Souedias StreetAthens, 10676

Research

A site for hosting the needs of one of Italy’s larger naval bases in the Mediterranean until the end of the Second World War and an exile island for political dissenters during the Greek military junta of 1967–74, Leros was denounced later as “the guilty secret of Europe” because of the inhumane psychiatric treatment that many of the patients of the mental hospital of Lepida received when more than 4,000 patients were brought to the island after it started functioning in 1958. The 2015 decision to build a refugee ‘hot spot’ (camp) in the area of Lepida once again touched upon past traumas at a time when more than 38,000 refugees were passing through the island, whose permanent population is fewer than 9,000. My research project entitled “Changing Spaces of Refuge: Histories and Geographies of Displacement amidst Politics of Crisis in Greece” is based on ethnographic and archival research conducted in Leros island and addresses the intertwining of memoirs of war and exile with the current affective manifestations of empathy and xenophobia, as well as the hope and despair that define the everyday life of a small Dodecanesian island situated opposite the Turkish coastline. This research builds upon the growing and renewed anthropological analyses of subjectivity, space and emotions, and engages with interdisciplinary and critical theories of memory, trauma and identity in order to offer novel understandings at the level of policy, public debate and community life regarding the institutional, social and cultural effects of the current economic and refugee crisis in Greece, and in Europe.

CV

Eirini Avramopoulou received a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge (title: “The Affective Language of Activism: An Ethnography of Human Rights, Gender Politics and Activist Coalitions in Istanbul, Turkey”, 2012). Her work has been published in several edited volumes and journals, including Subjectivity, The Greek Review of Social Research, Cultural Anthropology/Hot Spots, Critical Interdisciplinarity (Kritiki Diepistimonikotita), and Thesis. Her research interests include anthropology of human rights, social movements and activism; gender and sexuality; secularism and Islam; economic crisis, memory and trauma; queer theory, feminist and psychoanalytic approaches to subjectivity, biopolitics, and affect. She has participated and organised workshops, discussion panels and conferences related to affect, social movements and activism, as well as to issues of Islam and secularism in Europe, focusing on gender, ethnic minorities and refugees. She has taught at Panteio University (Greece), Social Anthropology Department and delivered lectures on postcolonialism, feminism, gender and queer theory at the University of Cambridge (UK), Bosphorus University (Turkey), the University of Thessaly (Greece), and the University of Athens (Greece). In 2013-2014 she was a fellow at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI), Berlin and in 2014-2015 she worked as a research fellow at the Sociology Department of the University of Cambridge on a project entitled, ‘The Human and Social Costs of Economic Crisis in Greece.’

2016. “The Affective Echoes of an Overwhelming Life: The Demand for Legal Recognition and the Vicious Circle of Desire, in the Case of Queer Activism in Istanbul, Turkey” in Othon Alexandrakis (ed.) Figuring Resistance: Ethnographic Exercises for the New Anthropology of Social Movements. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Pp. 41-62.

2017. “Hope as a Performative Affect: Feminist Struggles Against Death and Violence” Subjectivity. 10(3): 276-293.

2013. “Signing Dissent in the Name of ‘Woman’: Reflections on Female Activist Coalitions in Istanbul, Turkey” in Athena Athanasiou and Giorgos Tsimouris (eds.) Migration, Gender, and Precarious Subjectivities in times of Crisis. Special Issue in Review of Social Sciences, The Greek Review of Social Research. 140-141, B’-Γ’, pp. 233-246.

2002. “Identity Paths: From West Thrace to Gazi. Reflections and Conflicts Shaping Collective Identities. The Case of the Turkish Speaking-Muslims Residing in the Area of Gazi in Athens.” Thesis. 79: 127-161. (In Greek, co-authored with L. Karakatsanis).